When the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises, the Earth not only heats up, but extreme weather events, such as lengthy droughts, heat waves, heavy rain and violent storms, may become more frequent. ...

Nonnative species can affect the biogeochemistry of an ecosystem. For instance, Pacific salmon have been introduced as a sport fishery in many streams and lakes beyond their native range, but their introduction may be altering ...

(Phys.org)—Hydraulically fractured natural gas wells are producing less wastewater per unit of gas recovered than conventional wells would. But the scale of fracking operations in the Marcellus shale region is so vast that ...

Hydraulically fractured natural gas wells are producing less wastewater per unit of gas recovered than conventional wells would. But the scale of fracking operations in the Marcellus shale region is so vast that the wastewater ...

Most researchers imagine the initial oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere to have been something like a staircase, but with steps only going up. The first step, so the story goes, occurred around 2.4 billion ...

(Phys.org)—Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution geologist Liviu Giosan and an international team of collaborators including environmental engineers, modelers, paleogeographers, and paleobiologists have ...

In this week's issue of Nature a study lead by Stockholm University, with collaborators from Russia, US, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Spain and Denmark, show that an ancient and large carbon pool held in a less-studied form o ...

(Phys.org) -- Moqui marbles, unusual balls of rock that can be found rolling around the southwestern U.S. sandstone regions, were formed roughly 2 million years ago with the help of microorganisms. This discovery ...

Cities in both, the US and Europe harbour more plant species than rural areas. However, plant species of urban areas are closer related to each other and often share similar functions. Consequently, urban ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Recent work by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has shed new light on the perplexing environmental chemistry of plutonium. They demonstrated that under anaerobic, or oxygen-free, ...

The models used to understand how Earth's climate works include thousands of different variables from many scientific including atmospherics, oceanography, seismology, geology, physics and chemistry, but few take into consideration ...

It seems that the energy mix of the future will have to differ from the current suggestions of some visionaries. This is because the jet streams that sweep the upper atmosphere with high winds would yield ...

Over the last half a billion years, the ocean has mostly been full of oxygen and teeming with animal life. But earlier, before animals had evolved, oxygen was harder to come by. Now a new study led by researchers ...

The world's largest database on plants' functional properties, or traits, has been pub-lished. Scientists compiled three million traits for 69,000 out of the world's ~300,000 plant species. The achievement ...

Biogeochemistry

Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment (including the biosphere, the hydrosphere, the pedosphere, the atmosphere, and the lithosphere). In particular, biogeochemistry is the study of the cycles of chemical elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, and their interactions with and incorporation into living things transported through earth scale biological systems in space through time. The field focuses on chemical cycles which are either driven by or have an impact on biological activity. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus cycles. Biogeochemistry is a systems science closely related to systems ecology.